Author: Scott Ingram

It’s easy to get stressed in this world juggling work, relationships and all the life stuff in between. Sometimes when you’re stressed all you want to do is run away. As you sit staring at that difficult task that has to be done all you are probably thinking is how nice it would be to be sitting on the beach. Sadly though, that’s not always an option and sometimes you just have to push on through. So what can we do to help when we’re stressed but have to keep going?

We as humans wear our emotions on our bodies. When we’re happy we smile, when we’re angry we frown and when we’re sad we cry because how we feel affects how we look.

But did you know that the opposite is true as well?

How we look can affect how we feel.

Sometimes it’s possible to trick your mind into feelingbetter for a short period of time just by changing how you look. Here we have 3 simple tips to help you feel empowered instead of stressed out while you beat that looming deadline:

Smile!

Yes it may be the last thing you feel like doing as you’re slumped over a computer frantically typing but studies have shown that just moving your mouth into the position of a smile, even if you don’t think you have anything to smile about, can make you feel happier [1]. One study found that when they stressed people out and then tricked them into smiling without them realising (they put chopsticks horizontally in their mouth) they didn’t get as sad as those people who were stressed out and didn’t have chopsticks in their mouths [2]. Not only that, but the people who were tricked into smiling while doing a stressful task had a lower heart rate than those who weren’t smiling while doing the same task.

Sit up straight.

When we’re stressed and unhappy we’re more likely to hunch over and bend our heads down to the ground. This is not only as sign of stress but may actually be making you feel worse than you need to. Studies have shown that sitting up straight while doing something stressful raises your self-esteem, makes you happier, less afraid and keeps you more alert. It even affects the language you use. People who were slumped over while stressed used more negative emotion words in a speech than participants who were made to sit up straight [3].

Stand in your power pose.

The way you stand or sit sends out nonverbal cues to people about how powerful you are. Imagine someone swinging on an office chair with their feet up on the desk and their elbows up around their neck. Now imagine someone on a chair on the opposite side of the desk with hunched shoulders and their hands in their lap. It’s easy to see who is the powerful person in this situation. You can trick yourself into feeling more in control and less stressed by adopting a power pose. Spread your limbs out and take up as much room as you can. Imagine that you are the confident CEO of a large company. Studies have shown that doing this for just 1 minute can change not only how stressed you feel but also how your body responds to stress. People who adopt a power pose have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and higher levels of testosterone than people who are hunched over in a powerless pose [4].

So next time you’re stressed sit up, smile and adopt a power pose. This should help to get you over the hurdle until it’s time to stop, take the Pip out and relax.

Strack, F., L.L. Martin, and S. Stepper, Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1988. 54(5): p. 768.

Sleep is the crucial downtime when our bodies recover and repair themselves from the stresses and strains of the day. Going without good quality sleep, or any sleep at all, really can be an unpleasant experience. The all-too familiar effects – heavy eyes, aching muscles, poor attention span, reduced decision making abilities and being just that little bit more irritable than usual…

Sound familiar?

What’s more worrying than these symptoms, is that sleep deprivation can cause damaging changes to our immune systems, it increases the risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and it even affects our ability to learn new information and to lay down new memories [1-4]. You wouldn’t drive your car day after day, month on month, year after year without having some down time and doing regular checks and maintenance. If you did it wouldn’t take long before something gave way.

Why do the same to your body, by settling for poorer quality sleep?

So, our goal –better sleep.

And with that in mind, we’ve created a list of tips to help you improve your sleep. Try some of them and they should work wonders. You may find one is the cure all, a combination of a few might do just magic or some others don’t really fit the bill. Just like stress, sleep is a personal thing.

Exercise

We all know the benefits of regular exercise are far reaching and getting a good night’s sleep is one them. The human body was made to move – you should be working up a sweat on a regular basis so that it’s easier to nod off when it comes to bedtime. Try just getting off a stop earlier on the bus and walking. Regularly take the elevator? Try taking the stairs.

Avoid/Reduce Caffeine and Alcohol

Depending on a multitude of factors, the half-life of caffeine in our bodies is roughly between 5-10 hours. It’s likely that the 5th espresso you drank to get over your 4 o’clock slump is what’s got you lying in bed with a racing mind. Another beverage to avoid is alcohol. Alcohol is a disruptor of REM sleep (which is the type of good sleep that helps our brains stay healthy [5]). It may help you doze off to sleep by making you feel tired, but by the same sword it actually prevents your body going into a healing sleep by delaying the onset of REM sleep.

Have 2 separate bed times

Many experts are now pointing to separating your “bed time” into two distinct phases of (a) preparing to go to sleep and (b) actually sleeping. This is to routinely give your body a block of time to prepare to wind down and go to sleep. This would be opposite to the ever so common habit of working into the early hours till exhaustion and crashing your head into the pillow (and not necessarily getting the high quality Z’s needed).

So phase 1- “bed time” is a time where you wind down and are preparing your body to go to sleep. This means minimizing or removing all stimulants or distractions, if you can. Dimming the lights, making sure you aren’t checking emails or even typing up your work while lying in bed. This should be done around an hour or so before phase 2.

Phase 2 – “sleep time” the holy land for all those who love their snoozing. This is your actual bed time where your head hits the pillow. No need for instructions…

Jot it down

An hour before bed, try writing out tomorrow’s top “to do’s” on a card. This simple act/ceremony in itself can perform as a useful tool for putting aside tomorrow’s hustle and bustle and clearing your mind. But no essays, limit it to the real essential “to do’s”.

Minimize external distractions

It’s important to ensure your sleep goes as uninterrupted as possible. Our goal here is to reduce any noise and light that could upset your peaceful sleep. Curtains don’t darken the room enough? Wear an eye mask. Have a dog that scratches at your door at 4 am? Put them in a more distant room. Live in a noisy area? Wear ear plugs.

Read a book

Reading a book can help you sleep for a few reasons. It takes your mind off your daily stresses and transports you into a different world but, perhaps more importantly, reading a hard-copy of a book gives your eyes a break from the bright screens that we are glued to for most of the day. These screens – on phones, computers and tablets – emit a frequency of light known as blue-light. This type of light plays havoc with the parts of our brains that regulate sleep and disrupts production of the hormone melatonin which is responsible for making us feel sleepy[6]. Giving yours eyes a break from screens before bed will allow your body to produce melatonin and help you drift off to sleep. Plus, it’s nice to escape from the world in a good book now and again.

Have a gentle alarm

An alarm that wakes you gently is better than an adrenaline-inducing siren to get you out of bed. Try serene wake-up alarm melodies that start off quiet and get gradually louder. If you find yourself getting enough restful sleep, you can gradually begin to wake up, before your alarm, while still feeling well rested. If you are having to struggle to get out of bed, it’s probably that you’re not getting enough restful sleep, so continue to make small tweaks your sleep routine till you find a working solution.

Don’t stress about not being asleep…

You’ve downed tools for the evening, abstained from caffeine all day, your earplugs are in and the shades are drawn, but you stir restlessly in bed watching the minutes change on the clock. You can’t stop thinking about how much sleep you are missing out on by not being able to sleep. This is a stress-sleep cycle in which the less sleep you get the more stressed you feel and the more stressed you feel the less sleep and poorer quality sleep you get.

Don’t fret. And don’t feel you have to lie in bed. You can get up and do something that is low stress, non-stimulating and relaxing, or even boring. Avoid further stimulating your mind by surfing the web and reading Facebook – this will only add fuel to the fire. Try reading a book, drawing or ironing some clothes. Whatever tickles your fancy, and do this for 10—30 minutes, then try to hit the hay again. It should work.

Please note if you’ve read this article, acted on these tips and other available solutions and you don’t see any positive change, maybe you should think of having a conversation with your doctor and let them know.

You can read more about the effects of sleep apnea, sleep deprivation and related studies here.

3 quick tools to try:

Rainymood.com – http://www.rainymood.com/

Noisli – http://www.noisli.com/

Have a look at our book list (link coming soon!) for some good fiction and non-fiction recommendations

Thank you for all of your patience to date. We have made huge strides since our last update, however despite Trojan work, further refinement of our plastics tooling means one final delay before delivery. We would prefer that this was not the case, however we are committed to getting a perfect product into your hands and we share any disappointment you have and will take any criticism on the chin. We promise that the wait will have been worth it.

This Update has details about our updated schedule, batteries, boards, application approval and other certifications.

Shipping Update

The further refinement of our plastics tooling has set us back by 4 weeks from our previously updated schedule. Updated shipping dates is now the 3rd week in May. All other parts: Batteries, Boards, Plates listed below have had their designs finalized, have been produced and are awaiting final assembly, testing and shipping.

Updated Schedule / ETA

The updated schedule looks like this.

End of April / Beginning of May: Tooling completed and production of plastics for the body of Pip.

May – End of Week 1 – Week 3: Final assembly and quality control.

May – Week 3: Shipping of rewards.

Batteries
The batteries arrived from the factory at the start of April and were delivered to our final step manufacturer in less than 24 hours and now await assembly. All relevant testing was undertaken by our manufacturer and the final U.S. certification, UL 2054, is well underway. Below are photos of the unpacking of one of the units.

Sensor Discs
In our last update we had given the green light on the mass production of the sensor discs, this involved a number of complicated steps to forming and plating the sensor discs on a large scale. All our time and effort of fine tuning and refining the production process has finally paid off, with the sensor discs having optimum reading sensitivity.

Application submission to Appstore
All applications submitted to Apple’s Appstore must undergo a process of review. The 3 applications Relax & Race, The Loom, and Lie Detective are currently in different levels of submission and review and a breakdown of the submissions are as follows:

Relax & Race - Currently under review.

The Loom - Currently undergoing final tests before submission for review.

Lie Detective - Reviewed and approved.

The process of uploading the applications to Google Play is much less time consuming and will be submitted shortly.

Bluetooth Approval

In our last update we talked to you about Pip undergoing testing to pass all relevant regulations. The Pip has been certified by the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) granted full Bluetooth qualification. Pip’s applications to the FCC and IC are currently being examined by them and we expect to receive certification of in the next 2 weeks. We have engaged third party experts to help us through all certification processes.

Thank You

We must again express our thanks to all of you for your continued patience and support. Please be assured that we are working very hard to get the Pip into your hands as soon as possible.

As always, please feel free to contact us here on Kickstarter with any questions you may have.

A number of big updates coming down the line, but we hope you like what we have so far!

Hardware Update

So, over the past months, we have been tweaking away at our designs for the electronics, discs and plastics. As of last week, we have locked down and finalized the designs of these components and we are now in the final phase of getting the manufacturing process nailed down.

Below is a picture of the final batch of pre-production prototypes, ready for testing and further development.

So as you know we’ve been busy and redesigned the Pip’s hardware to be able to communicate with both Android and iOS devices. Accompanying that completed task, we have also developed the Relax & Race and The Loom applications to run on both operating systems and are now in the process of redesigning the game’s game-play, look and layout/navigation. Some pictures of Relax & Race’s new look below.

As previously promised in update #6, we are currently undertaking the task of designing, the “Quantified Self App” and in app recording ability to be included with the Pip. This app will allow you to record and review key performance statistics and charts to monitor and chart your performance over time. We are in the process of deciding the key statistics to be included, how they will be ultimately conveyed and the application’s look and layout. We’re interested to hear how you guys think it should look, so let us know!

New Team Member

We are happy to announce our latest team addition, welcome Dina! Dina joins us, having been a game developer for the past 11 years and is taking on the role of Mobile Game Developer. She has participated in the creation of several PC games and in the last couple of years she has developed multiple games and applications for mobile devices.

A number of big updates coming down the line, but we hope you like what we have so far!

Hardware Update

So, over the past months, we have been tweaking away at our designs for the electronics, discs and plastics. As of last week, we have locked down and finalized the designs of these components and we are now in the final phase of getting the manufacturing process nailed down.

Below is a picture of the final batch of pre-production prototypes, ready for testing and further development.

Pip Prototypes Awaiting Firmware Update

Software Update

So as you know we’ve been busy and redesigned the Pip’s hardware to be able to communicate with both Android and iOS devices. Accompanying that completed task, we have also developed the Relax & Race and The Loom applications to run on both operating systems and are now in the process of redesigning the game’s game-play, look and layout/navigation. Some pictures of Relax & Race’s new look below.

Relax & Race Dragons with Wireframe

Relax & Race Landscape with Wireframe

Relax & Race Racing Dragons

Relax & Race Landscape

Quantified Self App

As previously promised in update #6, we are currently undertaking the task of designing, the “Quantified Self App” and in app recording ability to be included with the Pip. This app will allow you to record and review key performance statistics and charts to monitor and chart your performance over time. We are in the process of deciding the key statistics to be included, how they will be ultimately conveyed and the application’s look and layout. We’re interested to hear how you guys think it should look, so let us know!

New Team Member

We are happy to announce our latest team addition, welcome Dina! Dina joins us, having been a game developer for the past 11 years and is taking on the role of Mobile Game Developer. She has participated in the creation of several PC games and in the last couple of years she has developed multiple games and applications for mobile devices.

So, 2 months on and the dust has settled after the flurry of our Kickstarter. As part of a thank you we wanted to share our lessons from our Kickstarter campaign with you all. Below is a number of do’s and don’ts that we’ve learned from our research, mistakes and learning along the way. Even if you’re not a company there are still some relative pointers that we think will help you. This is far from a comprehensive article on the topic but we think it can serve as a decent starting point.

Do:

Make Early Media Engagement.

This one sounds obvious, but we ignored it and could have cost us the project if we didn’t catch up on the ground we lost during our launch. Make contact with the relative media before your launch, get your stories agreed and lined up. Most of them will honour embargoes! Have everyone talking about your product when you launch. Creating a rolling snowball is always better than trickle of stories. Mike Del Ponte of Soma writes a brilliant article on this for Tim Ferris’s FourHourBlog (Link below).

Fine Tune Your Media Outreach.

Fine-tune your selection of relative media, don’t use a scatter gun technique of contacting the media. If you do, it’s likely you’ll just annoy them or they’ll ignore you. If you’re planning to fund a tech project on Kickstarter, chances are Good Housekeeping or the National Geographic aren’t going to want to give the story to their readers. Spend time researching who to contact.

Build Interest Before Launch.

Do build and engage your following on whatever social media platform of your choice BEFORE launch. Let people have an idea what you’re hoping to achieve, build their interest and gain their support so they know when and how to help you! See Seth Godin’s article below on the importance of doing this.

Set a Realistic yet Attainable Funding Target.

With Kickstarter, the all or nothing factor of the funding can be quite a daunting factor, not only for you, but also for potential backers. Set your funding goal to a relatively easy to reach goal, but not too low that you’re not going to be taken seriously. Spend time mashing out a number that if you reach you can afford to go ahead but low enough to you think you can clear at an early stage to get even greater support. The reasoning for this is, like any adoption curve, there is a portion of late adopters on Kickstarter who want to back projects that either have already succeeded or are likely to succeed. They will resist pledging support to projects that don’t look like they’ll come through. You’ve got to remember, they are parting with their hard earned cash. We even had a woman apologize for withdrawing her pledge as her dog needed veterinary treatment. Therefore you need to make it easy for them to make the leap of faith. Looking back the trend of projects seem to be, if you breach your target early on, you should snowball past it.

Create a Good Video.

Take time to make a good and engaging video, the statistics prove the dividends. It doesn’t have to be snazzy, fancy and professionally edited, but it does need to be clear and concise, get your point across through your own style/voice.

Climb the Ranks with $1 Pledges.

The “Recently Launched”, “Hardware” and “Popular Projects” pages can be your good friends. We got most of our pledges from these pages. This is where getting your family, friends and wider networks to make small donations really pays off. It’s not the value of pledges but the number of them that matter. Get lots of small pledges, it gets you climbing up to the top of these pages, which means more eyeballs, which means hopefully more pledges. As Steve Jobs once said “Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I never find anybody that didn’t want to help me if asked them for help”. Here it is really important to keep in mind that your friends and family are being generous, be grateful and pay the favour back. If it means grabbing a pint, making an introduction or a just thank you, do it.

“Do Your Homework”.

For your own research, do look for the commonalities between successful projects (an actually decent idea, the length of the video, project launch times and lengths, compelling copy, attractive and creative pledge rewards etc.) but also look at the failed projects. You can walk through the Kickstarter graveyard at kickbackmachine.com and learn from these mistakes.

Ponder over Paid Marketing Decisions.

If you have budgeted for paid marketing channels, give a good think about what channels, will provide an adequate return and attract the right people. We aren’t claiming that we did everything right and we won’t try to dissuade any of you, but our return on investment for our marketing spending was less than 5%. Use the right channels and do it right, you may not need to pay for yours.

Don’t:

Don’t think it’s going to be easy.

The projects that you see getting funded in 24 hours and reaching three, four or five hundred percent are the rock stars of Kickstarter. Just like in real life, it’s only a small percentage of the field that make it to those heights. But if you have a good product that grabs people’s attention, spurs emotion and gets them thinking, who’s to say you can’t be the rock stars. There are steps you can take and formulas you can implement that can help push the odds in your favour of getting past the big 100% line. Some of the really valuable ones that we leaned heavily are linked below.

Avoid launching in summer.

This was a lesson we nearly had to learn the hard way. Everyone talks about it and it makes sense – a lot of people are on holidays during these months. Not to mention the weather being good enough to even draw us away from our computers for most hours of the day. Imagine that. It’s blindingly obvious but less people in work or online, means less people visiting the Kickstarter site and less people visiting your project page.

Don’t See Launching Your Kickstarter Project as the Finishing Point.

It is only the beginning…of a beautiful friendship (just for all the Casa Blanca fans out there). The great community that is Kickstarter are a hugely passionate crowd and if you’ve a good project, they’ll want to support you and will provide you with invaluable insights and ideas to your project going forward. Kickstarter opens a two way conversation, just make sure to listen.

One last do for all of you! If you are considering launching your own Kickstarter, please make sure to let us know when you launch, we’ll be more than happy to spread the word and pledge our support!

Yours in relaxation,

The Galvanic Team

Other Material:

The piece by Mike Del Ponte of Soma on marketing your Kickstarter project on the Four Hour Work Week Blog. An invaluable read for cost effective marketing. Here is their Kickstarter that raised over $140,000 in 38 days.

This talk by Michael Paek of Cliffhanger productions, (who raised over $550,000 in less than 25 days) is a great 30 minute video on some do’s and don’ts for companies outside the U.S. setting up Kickstarter for the U.S.

As a non-U.S. Kickstarter project, the article below by GoldHawk Interactive – the minds behind the successful Xenonauts Kickstarter was a solid starting point for us and invaluable in our efforts. If you’re a non-U.S. company definitely give it a read through. It clearly goes through the all steps you’ll face.